


The Dance + Spinning + Spring

by Unovis



Series: The Village [5]
Category: Highlander: The Series
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-08-19
Updated: 2013-08-19
Packaged: 2017-12-23 23:45:39
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,682
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/932505
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Unovis/pseuds/Unovis
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Three brief looks at Methos, Darius, and their neighbors in the village.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Dance + Spinning + Spring

The Dance

It took a few weeks of living cheek by shaven jowl for Darius to notice some things about Methos. He could not say whether all was new behavior; they'd never shared a house so basic in its amenities and rooted in its place. His guest was quieter than Darius remembered, and slow to smile. He was clean in his habits. He was neat and clever with his hands, though he hated heavy work.He would knit, he would tie harness, he would mend pots and baskets, he would sort and preserve and prepare medicinal herbs, he would cook; he ate their plain fare with little relish, and was still far too thin. He hated digging with a passion, but dug hard and well. He dug the baker's son's grave without comment, but the widow's privy was a subject the priest would hear about for years.

After one thorough inspection, and rapping on the root-cellar door, Methos avoided the church, pointedly when Darius was at prayer. Sunday Mass he attended, when any villager was present to observe. His own prayers, if he ever made them, were conducted behind his teeth and eyes. Holy ground or no, he argued for a bar on the door, which Darius refused to consider. True, he seemed as comfortable naked as clothed and often sat grooming himself by the fire in nothing but the widow's charitable socks. Whether that was custom or further inducement to guard the door, Darius had yet to decide. It was not a sight to inspire lust. Except...there was a sweet arch to his side as he lifted his elbow and washed beneath his arm; there was a sharp grace to the length of his limbs when the firelight slid along them.There was the spark in the devil's eye when he caught Darius watching him shave.

Ah, lust. It was a matter for meditation. Had Darius said, would he say, no to any advance--he knew from experience--the devil would have turned away with tolerable grace. But accepted, Methos gripped with a hunger brutal in its need. This urgency, this carelessness of pain, was new. On the tour of the church, Darius had been seized against the crypt wall and taken with such force from behind that his knees bled into his cassock. He'd pushed himself back to find Methos nursing a hand broken from pounding on the stone. It was dark in the guttering torchlight, too dark to see the devil's eyes, though the long front of him shone wetly above his trews. Methos laid his bloody, sizzling palm against the side of Darius's face and kissed his lips and his eyelids, gently, sweetly as a flower.They held each other so, rocking against the wall, until the cold seeped through to their bones. Was he enchanted? He was on fire. He was old enough, too, to know all flames died down. He was determined to keep the devil here until they both gained a balance of their humours.

Methos had the habit of writing and reading and it was hard for him to break. There was little here for him to mark on, in the house or in the church. He read Darius's letters, taken from a casket the priest swore was securely locked. He'd sat one night after supper and written sentences in soft stone on the hearth, then frowned when he brushed them away. The next morning, he missed Mass. Darius returned to find him sitting on their bed, with a piece of paper in his hands. It was a print that had hung on the wall, and at first, Darius feared it had been lost to words; then he saw the look of Methos's face. Pity, caution, and desire, combined, was a too-familiar reaction to this man. He touched his shoulder.

"Interesting subject," Methos said.

"The source of many sermons, my son." Darius made himself glance down, at the woodcut's familiar lines. It showed a dance: a peasant, a knight, a lady, a priest, a ruler, a pope, all in a line, partnered by skeletons that laughed and tore at their clothes. Leading the dance, largest of all, was Death, wearing a crown and a sword.

+++

Spinning

Lisette was no hand at the needle; her knitting knotted; nor could she spin. "Naked, your husband, your babes," tutted her mother.

"A naked husband!" Lisette laughed and shook her head. "A fine sight he'd look behind a plow. Or on a mule! Could you picture it?"

"Not a treat, girl, when he's cold and pebbled like a plucked goose. Unsnarl that and start again." Marette pursed her lips. Lisette turned her smiling cheek away and twisted the spindle against her thigh. Hopeless. Getting a man was easy. Keeping a house, making a home, raising sound children under God's eye, were different matters entire. And this one winking at the world. She was a winter child, after all, and made of her mother an Elizabeth. The others were long grown and departed; but bless her, she'd lighted her father's last years, and for that... "Look, now, look, you've broke the thread. There's good wool wasted in a knot. A scarf for the priest, that was going for."

"Oh." Lisette straightened on her stool and pulled at the grubby tangle. "For Father Darius? Or for his poor, naked brother? Something new, to wear around his neck." She pulled with a will now, trying to stretch out the clumps in the strand. "A good green for his eyes, and soft, to cosset his long neck, and a broad red stripe to cheer him."

"And a silver bell on the ends, for when he meets the Queen. First spin a thread that doesn't look like the cat spit it up, then we'll talk about a broad red stripe." Hopeless. "And that's Brother Matthieu you're speaking of, with no respect." A man who kept his eyes decently on his shovel when he worked, with not a stray word or smile out of him. Thin as death, but strong. Strange. Dear to the Father, foolish girl.

"Who is he, do you think? Not a priest."

"A lay brother." She saw Lisette begin with a new soft curl of wool. Wasteful; but showing more care.

"He doesn't pray. He doesn't preach. He's never in the church but Sundays and he doesn't assist at Mass. He didn't know about the fete tomorrow. Marie thinks he's Mysterious."

"Marie thinks sheep can fly. Mind your work." She'd have a word with the Father, all the same. Lisette's thread was wobbling out, straighter than before. Marette sniffed and let her own spindle twirl with a practiced hand. She’d been a girl, once. She'd looked at a man with clean limbs and northern eyes who smelt of incense and mystery. She'd tweaked the nose of their jealous God. And look, look what the years had done.

"Sing me a song, Lisette," she said. Blanca's sister's son had a long, cold neck.

+++

Spring

"This here, this one, this is a, a grape."

"Grape." Brother Matthieu nodded and made a mark on a tag of bark.

Ponset sucked his teeth and nodded back. He picked up another root from the bench. He shook it and a dribble of dried earth fell. He brought it up to a hand's width of his eyes and squinted. "And this, this here one, this itself is an olive. No, I lie. It's a small olive."

"Small olive," repeated Matthieu, and made more marks on a new tag.

Darius looked at them over his rake. The village men hadn't taken to Methos-Matthieu. The more Matthieu he became the less distrustful they were, but at heart they didn't care for the look of him, or his talk, small though it was, or the way the women sought him out. "Do some good," Darius had advised him, at first. "Be industrious. They value work and fine craft." Methos had shrugged it off. He claimed much experience in making himself unremarkable without breaking his back. That was truth, as far as it went with the great wide world. There was no question of fading in among folk here. He was the brother, or something like it, of their own prized saint and he was watched like a black cat in a dairy.

During the long winter he'd barely stepped off Holy Ground unless Darius sent him on errands. He claimed he would depart when the weather improved. When his hair grew. When he put more flesh on his bones. Two months of that. Verily, his hair grew, his frame filled out a bit, and his smile began to show again with the sun. When the first blunt blades of crocus rose from the earth beside the church door, each day he turned toward them the extra pace or two to see their progress.

When Darius built his house, he'd extended one wall a bit at the side, to give the backing of a stable. The remaining walls were wattle and daub, with a thatched roof, and now sheltered only the goat and the skeps of wintering bees. The mule that died on Christmas eve had not been replaced. Matthieu had helped to clean out the empty stall, grumbling. He'd patched the roof, under the goat's yellow eyes, when he saw how it leaked. He ripped dead vines from the crumbling garden fence. He spent a day looking through the gardening tools and stored supplies. He'd questioned Darius about the garden contents and local plantings, and last week braved a visit with mère Marette. She must have put him onto old Ponset, for here he was, in the lee of the stable door, sorting roots and clippings with the attentive heathen guest.

Darius made a note to put out a quiet request for help with stones; for bricks, if the stone was not available, though the ruins on the hill should provide enough. A larger garden, a higher fence. A four-walled stable to house a new mule. Ponset was calling Matthieu "lad," and promising advice on manuring berry beds.

**Author's Note:**

> Re-post. First posted October 2005


End file.
